Coaching Questions Group 17

To help your group and the teachers prepare for the tutor meetings, we would like you to answer a few questions in between sessions. The following paragraphs list the questions for each of the weeks, please write you answers directly underneath the questions.

After the kick-off - Week 1

• What are you expecting to learn during the Robots course?
  • How to effectively work in group.
  • How to properly edit, create and redirect a Wiki.

• What kind of coaching do you expect?
  • Passive support, main focus on progress, report, rather that the specifics of the project.

• What kind of coaching would you prefer?
  • Feedback on content, progress and report.

• What will the coaches expect of you?
  • Actively thinking/contributing to the project.
  • Working properly as a group.
  • Asking questions about matters that are unclear.

After the first tutor meeting - Week 2

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
  • First of all, we were told our project was not specific enough, which means we have to pretty much redo everything done up until now.
  • Furthermore, the planning of the meetings is outright terrible: our meeting was delayed by 15 minutes before commencing and was also cut short to 15 minutes.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
  • We have come up with a new idea, which we have tried our best to make as specific as possible.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
  • No new activities were undertaken, we had to redo all previous work.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
  • Redo all the work we did for last weeks meeting, to make sure this idea does get approved.

After the second tutor meeting - Week 3

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
  • Our idea was accepted and was deemed appropriate for the course, if we put focus on the user/use cases.
  • An interview might be a good idea to get insight in the effectiveness of real life applications.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
  • We incorporated feedback from the meeting, i.e. choose a more specific/appropriate subject.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
  • We interviewed a construction worker on his thoughts on the project.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?

After the third tutor meeting - Week 4

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
  • That we as "theoretical" engineers definitely do not know how everything works in reality.
  • Our idea is still viable, but we have to put more focus on the user.
  • We have to think about how we want to show our simulation, it has to be insightful and useful.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
  • We have updated the wiki by integrating a section with decisions made regarding the user.
  • Additionally, we updated the section regarding assumptions to clear up some misunderstandings.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
  • Started working on the User Interface
  • We have tried to create a first working version of the simulation.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
  • We have been extensively working on our project.

After the fourth tutor meeting - Week 5

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
  • We need to be more specific regarding drone movement
  • It would be enough to have 1 test building as to make the project as specific as possible
  • It is unclear what 'interactivity' the simulation will have
  • The test cases page doesn't have a key/index

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
  • The simulation section on the wiki has been updated to reflect what interactivity (E.g. adding construction workers) is possible
  • A description of the test building has been added to the simulation section
  • Assumptions about drone movement (E.g. 1 drone per transition) have been added and/or made more explicit
  • Many implicit assumptions have been made explicit (E.g. height of floors)

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
  • More work on the UI was performed. We learned things about Java mouseListeners
  • The wiki was updated. We learned that we have to be very explicit and that every small detail can be very important.
  • More work on the simulation was done.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
  • Major overhaul of the wiki
  • Extensive work has been done on the simulation

After the fifth tutor meeting - Week 6

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
  • We received the compliment that our program is quite impressive, but there still seem to be things unclear about it.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
  • We focussed mainly on getting the program finalized and have the presentation ready for this thursday.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
  • We worked on the presentation. We did not specifically learn anything from that.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
  • Well, this weeks meeting is the final presentation. We finished our simulation and program and prepared the presentation.

After the final presentation - Week 7

• What are the major steps of the project? Please list

1. Come up with an idea that is both interesting and specific, yet not trivial.
2. Perform research on related subjects; find out what has already been done and where you can make the difference.
3. Start thinking of how you want your project to get to work. Use outside input (potential end users) to figure out what is good and what can be improved.
4. Work on the project, incorporating obtained feedback.
5. Finalize project and present it to the potential users.

• What is the most important thing you learned in this project? (e.g. about design or working in groups, etc)
  • You definitely do not know all there is to know about a certain field. Always incorporate the visions/knowledge of people who are more familiar with the field than you are!

• What do you wish you had spent more time on or done differently?
  • It was quite irritating that our idea was rejected after we had spend a good 2,5 weeks on it. Next time we would definitely try to get feedback earlier than that, such that we would be able to spend our time on more important things.

• What was the most enjoyable part of this project? Please explain why
  • Working together as a group on a larger software project was very enjoyable, as most of us had not yet undertaken a project of this magnitude.

• What was the least enjoyable part of this project? Please explain why
  • The weekly assesments were quite harsh. During these meetings we sometimes had to explain things that had been on the wiki for a couple of weeks. Additionally, almost all feedback was critisism. Critisism by itself is a good thing, but if you never get a compliment and just get critisised constantly, it gets hard to put yourself to work on a project.